more from
Milieu Music Digital
We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Phosphene Weather [10th Anniversary Expanded Reissue]

by Milieu

supported by
ZZZ
ZZZ thumbnail
ZZZ Some of the finest sounds in the universe! I'm glad that I found this some years ago. Excellent!
Mark Derby
Mark Derby thumbnail
Mark Derby "Aboir" is lovely; DC Mix IV exquisitely disturbing.
Approx. 35 titles by Grainger, Milieu and Coppice Halifax in my music library, yet how many years before I found out: all were created by the same person?
Dennis Albrecht
Dennis Albrecht thumbnail
Dennis Albrecht I almost overlooked this one, and am deeply grateful that Bandcamp featured it on a "Music Designed to Help You Sleep" post.
And well, there is not much more too say: Phosphene Weather may be one of the most calming albums I have in my personal collection. It offers deep relaxation, that so far I only found in Milieus other releases: "Sun Dazed", "Faces Preserved in Ash", and "A Blue Fume" (released under the Coppice Halifax alias). Favorite track: [Dream Compost Mix I].
Rik Johnson
Rik Johnson thumbnail
Rik Johnson Around 2011, I stumbled upon a song someone had uploaded to youtube called "Phosphene Weather". It was one of the most beautiful pieces I'd ever heard. I immediately sought out anything I could find by the artist. I'm happy to see this is being re-released, and with additional material. This entire album is amazing. Favorite track: Phosphene Weather.
Micro Landscape of a Bathroom Sink
Micro Landscape of a Bathroom Sink thumbnail
Micro Landscape of a Bathroom Sink One of my favourite Milieu albums. Happy to be able to play it on the train commute as well now.
more...
/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $18 USD  or more

     

  • Full Digital Discography

    Get all 242 Milieu releases available on Bandcamp and save 90%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Across the Surface of the Water, Mural Hex, Divergent Paths [Volume Five], Focussed Light, Aeolian Yellow, Snow Maps, Snow Maps, Winter Displacement, and 234 more. , and , .

    Purchasable with gift card

      $247 USD or more (90% OFF)

     

  • SUPPORT ME ON PATREON FOR MORE ANALOG BOTANY

  • Limited Edition 2xCD-R Expanded Reissue Set
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Out of print for ten years! Includes a brand new Coppice Halifax excavation and an entire 70+ minute second disc of previously unreleased mixes!

    Assembled by hand, one copy at a time, in the White Pillar Workshop! Two white 5" recordable discs, printed and duplicated via an Imation D20 disc duplication machine, held inside a brown 100% recycled cardboard dual digipak, with two 4x5" printed cardstock inserts, and custom text sticker work on the back cover and inner gatefold. 4x4" cover sticker in seven different design variants, all designed and printed by David Tagg in Atlanta GA. Also includes a folded reproduction of the original A5 insert sheet that came with the vinyl in 2009, with extensive liner notes penned by the artist for this reissue, printed on the back. Ships inside a waterproof plastic bubblemailer, to keep your sonic artifact dust and moisture-free.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Phosphene Weather [10th Anniversary Expanded Reissue] via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

1.
2.
3.
Aboir 17:12
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

about

It was 2009, two years into the INSTALL label I co-owned and operated with sun-brother David Tagg, and three years into our vanity imprint Second Sun Recordings. David and I were always brimming with enough ideas to populate entire catalogues with, and almost as much energy to manifest them. I’m not sure where or when the discussion started, but pressing vinyl was the name of our game that year. Our first was the Arctic / Blue Dub 12”, cut from the collaborative vehicle SEAS, which David and I used for our electronic explorations, as the curtain release in the Expanding Electronic Diversity catalogue. That went well enough, but was very nearly a disaster, mostly due to the fact that the pressing plant that manufactured it was actually a plastics company out of New Jersey, who apparently knew next to nothing about the process. I’d found them somehow, and we pursued it only because they were within driving distance from David’s design company in Long Island, and because they were willing to cut only 100 copies for us. All kinds of amateurish problems plagued the process, yet despite those aspects of it, we were determined to do it again, better the second time around.

Somewhere in there, likely the Spring-Summer of 2009, I’d finished recording work on what was designed to be my first vinyl release as Milieu. I cannot remember how long I’d toiled over it, but I remember logging a good amount of time on it, likely all through the previous season. It was all done the old fashioned way, with a bit of a purist approach on my Westone Concorde I electric guitar, my Lowrey “Magic Genie” organ, a Tascam 414 Mk. II four-track tape machine and a large amount of effects boxes. Field recordings were captured on a portable digital recorder at my Columbia home (Rolling Knoll) and my mother-in-law’s home deeper in the country (Foxhill), and bounced to reel-to-reel tape on a Roberts 450A tape machine.

The material recorded was intended to represent a sort of pinnacle point in the mountain ranges of my ambient work, referential to things like the self-titled Milieu album, the sunken orchestral processing of the Beyond The Sea / Beyond The Stars albums and the wind-blown textures of A Warm Wooden Hollow. Listening to it now, ten years later, it is apparent to me how close the material is to my Sun-Day series, and there’s even a little bit of my Eight Thousander rehearsal-tape-that-then-became-an-album in there too.

A close friend of mine from New Zealand, who for years was my “second ears” on certain projects, wrote back after listening to it with the comment “Another sunset for sale”, which has followed me around since then, especially when I am producing music that has such a clearly emotive and filmic bend to it. And it did feel like quite a colorful sunset that November, when we got the random-color splattered 12”s and heard, for the first time, Milieu unspooling from analog grooves in slow spirals.

The titling employed for these recordings was initially only a reference to my lifelong practice of laying down to sleep with my arm draped over my eyes, applying just enough pressure to light up an ever-evolving array of psychedelic visuals, dancing around on the insides of my eyelids – phosphenes. Communicating the notion to David, who was doing the visual design work for it, was difficult at first – I was always dragging my designer friends through hell with my badly translated ideas - but once we happened upon the halftone in black and white, it all seemed to settle into place, and I felt that David really outdid himself with the seven pieces he created, which seem to say so much about movement and the suggestion of forms, but give the listener nothing concrete to latch onto.

I didn’t even know what the phenomenon was called until I was in my twenties, and it felt like an appropriate analogy for my music, especially my relationship with the guitar – operating for years in the dark, on impulse, reactively learning and growing through trial and error (mostly error), carving out a creative voice that owed just as much to the adversity and lack of proper tools as it did to whatever was happening in the wrists...only to stumble, clumsy and dazed, upon the names of these things later, long after they had become second nature to me. I’d spent most of my teenage years feeling like I was running to keep up with all of my peers, as an instrumentalist – mostly because I never had any training, or knew the “right way” to do anything – and now, on the 10th anniversary of this landmark recording I made in the blistering heat of the subtropical South, I cannot help but feel that I pushed myself into some indefinable creative space through my years of blind determination. Pulling all of the lonesome sadness out of these six metal strings in humid bedrooms, distilling it down into another sunset for sale.

- Brian Grainger
November 13th, 2019 / Dayton, Ohio

credits

released November 19, 2019

Written and produced by Brian Grainger in beautiful South Carolina (#1-3) and Ohio (#4-9). Recorded at Rolling Knoll, Spring-Summer 2009 (#1-3) and White Pillar Workshop, Autumn 2019 (#4-9). Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Special thanks to David Tagg for his sun blessings, brotherly love and alchemical design work. Tracks 1-3 originally issued at INSTALL on limited edition vinyl as INSTLP01 in 2009. Text, reissue layout work and labeling stickers by ABM&D. Cover stickers designed and printed by David Tagg in picturesque Atlanta GA. This is Milieu Music number AD50, and the 50th issue in the ongoing Arboreal Digest reissue catalog. www.milieu-music.com / www.analogbotany.com

Special thanks to all of the members of the Milieu Music Fan Club at Patreon (www.patreon.com/analogbotany). With their continued support, more music like this release can happen! At the present moment, the members of the Fan Club are: Burt T / Brian S / Jake P / Christ S / Damian H / Levi G / Brian C / Arthur W / Joel B / Peter H-B / Rik J / Jose S / David P / Helge J / Peter C / Alan A / Alex G / Seth B / David T / Devin H / Mathieu L / Andy B / Francois H / Benoit P / J.C. Bastos / Michael R

Many humble thanks to the subscribers of the Deep Earth series. Without them, this music might not exist, and if it did, you might not be able to hear it. Support deep electronic mining initiatives today: malfokusita.bandcamp.com

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Milieu Dayton, Ohio

Psychedelic electronic music, sun-warmed analog ambient and sci-fi braindance, for cats, aliens and epicureans alike.

I also release music as Coppice Halifax: coppicehalifax.bandcamp.com

contact / help

Contact Milieu

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

Milieu recommends:

If you like Milieu, you may also like: